MIA97FA179 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 and Cessna 305E · Accident: midair collision en route
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA179
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Aircraft 1 · Piper J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N804DA
- Operator
- Jimmie R. Peddycord · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · Cessna 305E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N305JH
- Operator
- James R. Peddycord · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Clearance › Not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
- Pilot of other aircraft › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Cessna 305E, N305JH, had been airborne about 11 minutes, & Piper J3C-65, N804DA, had been airborne about 2 minutes, when a collision of the 2 airplanes occurred. The collision occurred about 2 miles west of the departure airstrip. A witness said he 1st heard a loud sound, then saw both airplanes flying northeast bound. When he 1st saw them, the airplanes appeared to be side by side at the same altitude with the left airplane in a slight bank & the right airplane in a right bank. Both airplanes then entered uncontrolled descent & crashed. No adverse weather was reported. There was evidence that when the midair occurred, the Piper was below & to the left of the Cessna. The upper surface of the left wing of the Piper collided with the left side of the Cessna's empennage just forward of the left horizontal stabilizer. Several of the longerons on the Cessna airplane were damaged, & the cambered surface of the left wing of the Piper airplane was damaged. Exam of the airframes, engines, & flight controls of both airplanes revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. The pilot of the Piper had logged 2.0 hrs of formation flying time. The pilot of the Cessna, who was the son of the Piper pilot, was a military pilot & had received military flight training in formation flying.
Probable cause
failure of the pilots in both airplanes to see and/or avoid a collision with each other.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA179
- Event ID
- 20001208X08188
- Case number
- MIA97FA179
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5c5f9283a6b4a4dc0a99423c0cdfb97d779c397bb3eb0592a50e820d3c2b2c99; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:23.363Z.